


walk of shame

by iimpavid



Series: a violent tongue for violent deeds [5]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Kidnapping, M/M, Spiders, complete disregard for canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 14:05:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18345185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid
Summary: Sam said to me, "Hey Rae what if Celebrimbor 1) slept with Sauron 2) thus accidentally cheating on his husband and 3) didn't actually die horribly". This was the result. It's unbeta'd and unfinished (obviously) but I'm making y'all look at it anyway.





	walk of shame

**Author's Note:**

> Sam said to me, "Hey Rae what if Celebrimbor 1) slept with Sauron 2) thus accidentally cheating on his husband and 3) didn't actually die horribly". This was the result. It's unbeta'd and unfinished (obviously) but I'm making y'all look at it anyway.

Celebrimbor came awake to a bevy of sensations, each more confusing than the last: a dense headache from a party that had run too far into the small hours, but he could not for the life of him think of what party he had attended; cold stone beneath his cheek, though he knew for certain he hadn’t fallen asleep in his workshop; the delicious soreness across his back that could only have been from Elboron’s fingernails, but Elboron was laying siege to Angband and could not be held responsible for them.

Of course, Elboron could not be held responsible for them. It wasn’t Elboron he’d taken to bed. 

Annatar had proven a voracious and violent lover.

_ Sîdhon will never forgive me _ .

A wave of nausea at what he’d done spurred him to open his eyes at last. The low light sent a lance of pain through his skull and he pressed a hand to his temple to try to contain it. He lay on rough-hewn stone facing a wall of yet more stone and the light was a sick red emanating from a brazier hung in the ceiling. This was not his workshop. 

There came a considering hum from behind him and a voice, nearly musical in its cadence, mused, “I do think you have the right of it. That Elboron of yours is not a temperate fellow; I can’t see why you call him  _ patient _ .”

Celebrimbor scrambled to turn— he couldn’t stand to have his back to a voice such as that and when he rolled, dizzy, into a crouch he understood why the speaker caused him such panic. Seated on an anvil, for this was indeed a workshop but for a much fouler purpose than Cel’s had ever been used, was not Elf or Maia. Draped in shining black silk and gold bangles he was something altogether Other and terrible to behold. With hair like new flame and the waxy look of a fresh corpse and a golden, unblinking eye filigreed into the flesh of his forehead. The eye fixed itself on Celebrimbor, who stared back in animal fear and dared not think his name.

“Charming of you though it is to try to avoid insulting me I feel compelled by pity to warn you: the more you avoid it, the more you shall think of it. Your little minds are weak that way,” Sauron told him, clearly disappointed. “You have none of your grandfather’s mettle, do you?”

He straightened to standing though it took all his courage to do it. The movement caused a metal rattling that he hadn’t heard before but now that he wrestled his attention from fear he could feel the heavy iron manacle around his bare ankle. The other end of the chain was fastened to the anvil. It seemed long enough to reach the edges of the circular workshop but short enough that he would only ever be able to get within arm’s reach of the bolted door. 

“I was not made for war.” Sauron— or more likely some servant of his— had dressed him in roughspun and had not given him shoes and he shivered with the cold. His comfort and safety were not important here.

“Ah, but you make its tools so well.” 

“I prefer to make humbler things,” he corrected, gently as he ever said anything though his heart thundered in his breast with the need to flee. 

Sauron watched him with the mesmerizing intensity of a hungry snake. “You would call the Elessar humble?”

“It was humble of purpose, a thing of healing and light, not power or greed.” 

“Do you fancy yourself a magician as well as a jeweler?” The dreadful sorcerer slipped from his perch and glided toward Celebrimbor on silent feet. Celebrimbor did his best to back away. Amused, Sauron pursued him until Cel reached the very end of his lead, the black and heavy chain stretched taught. He loomed over the elf. “Why so coy,  _ vanima _ ? You weren’t so reluctant last night.” 

“I was seduced by your glamour; I can see clearly now and I don’t want you anywhere near me,” he said plainly, if a little shrill. 

“Can you?” He reached out and hooked a finger through the fine mithril strand that lay around Celebrimbor’s neck, pulled him closer by it. “Tell me, then, what is it that you see?” 

From the chain hung a simple pendant. A token Elboron had made him long ago in Nargothrond, engraved with the seal of his house on one side and a perfect slice black opal set on the other. It had taken Elboron (a warrior who had only set his stubborn will toward the forge a short century prior) many months to manage it. It cost him countless splintered stones and much mangled metal. The outcome was, to a jeweler’s eye, rough. An apprentice’s piece. It was Celebrimbor’s most-prized possession. He would hold it when he worried, for opals were gems that relished the warmth of hands and only grew brighter the more they were touched, but he recoiled in fear that Sauron might lay even the tip of a fingernail to it. The cold that radiated from Sauron like new frost would surely shatter the gem.

Celebrimbor jerked back. Fell sprawling onto his back at the farthest end of the shackle’s chain, it also yanked his necklace from Sauron’s finger. He grasped at the chain and was relieved to find it whole.

Sauron smirked down at him. 

“What would you have of me?” Celebrimbor demanded. “Have you just grown bored without a Fëanorian to toy with?” 

“Oh, impossibly bored--  you hardly have any uncles left to host. Ah, but you,  _ you _ I would like to avoid maiming. That would make it very hard for you to work.” Celebrimbor’s lip curled reflexively— to have a hand in bringing more of Sauron’s foul works to life! Sauron laughed at him. “Do you think to refuse me? For such a simple commission, one that I haven’t even yet described to you, I would make you Great. Not that you deserve it but it would be the least I could do to repay you.”

“Will you kill me if I refuse?” 

“Oh, no, perish the thought. I would never  _ kill _ you. But We do have quite the infestation of spiders in the dungeons and I have it on good authority that they are hungry.”

* * *

So it came to pass that Celebrimbor, Curufin’s son, Last of the House of Finwë entered The Dark Lord’s service; for it seemed to him that so long as he was free to do this much then he could still seek to subvert Sauron’s wicked designs. 

Subvert them he did. In crafting the Three to fair and pure purpose and sending them forth with Annatar with a soft-spelled warning, he gave the Eldar the only advantage they could hope to have: freedom from his total dominion. For a time at least. Temptation would follow with the One but this much Celebrimbor could guarantee.

The moment his betrayal was discovered he expected Sauron to fall on him in a maelstrom of fury. To pass him into the keeping of some balrog lieutenant for an eternity of torture. Or to simply strike him dead at a distance, too disgusted to waste the resources necessary.   
  
But the Deceiver kept his word. He did not kill Celebrimbor.   
  
He brought the smith into the dungeons below even the darkest depths of Thangorodrim. There he hacked the braid from Celebrimbor’s head and melted the mithril necklace straight from his neck, and left him there among the throng of Avari who had not proven worth the effort of breaking into orc-shapes. Sauron left him there for two years.

* * *

For many months he feared what Sauron had threatened, that the spiders would eat him in the dark.

As it turned out, he ate the spiders first. 

**Author's Note:**

> I might someday finish this.  
> maybe.  
> listen I'm doing my best.


End file.
